Among statewide consortia, OhioLINK has broken new ground in redefining how successful interlibrary loan can become, by letting patrons directly borrow books from member libraries. We know little about the characteristics of books that are shared among the member libraries of consortia. Although several articles describe the OhioLINK implementation and experience, no previous formal study has been undertaken to describe what patrons borrow. The present work attempts to fill this void by examining 40,742 book requests initiated by patrons on OhioLINK. It describes what books patrons requested in terms of publication date, country of publication, language, and subject scope. It presents the demand for interlibrary borrowing in terms of characteristics of the institutions (for instance, collection strength and student enrollment) and in terms of the patrons' academic status. One finding is that, as a group, undergraduates are a major new category of users (42%). Additionally, about half of the books requested were published in the preceding seven years. Of these requested books, 90% were published in 1960 or later. Findings, such as these, raise new questions about the number of copies of a book that libraries across the nation need to preserve for archival and potential research use.더 읽기…

초록:

Among statewide consortia, OhioLINK has broken new ground in redefining how successful interlibrary loan can become, by letting patrons directly borrow books from member libraries. We know little about the characteristics of books that are shared among the member libraries of consortia. Although several articles describe the OhioLINK implementation and experience, no previous formal study has been undertaken to describe what patrons borrow. The present work attempts to fill this void by examining 40,742 book requests initiated by patrons on OhioLINK. It describes what books patrons requested in terms of publication date, country of publication, language, and subject scope. It presents the demand for interlibrary borrowing in terms of characteristics of the institutions (for instance, collection strength and student enrollment) and in terms of the patrons' academic status. One finding is that, as a group, undergraduates are a major new category of users (42%). Additionally, about half of the books requested were published in the preceding seven years. Of these requested books, 90% were published in 1960 or later. Findings, such as these, raise new questions about the number of copies of a book that libraries across the nation need to preserve for archival and potential research use.